Last month, the Costa Rican Ministry of Health approved a regulation to facilitate the sale of “medical cannabis products” aka weed, ganja, grass, mota, but only, in their words, to help patients in urgent need due to health problems. The so-called medical marijuana will be available by prescription only. A bill had been approved in 2022, but it took almost three years and a new administration to actually get the joint rolled and lit, so to speak.
While many websites I found were promoting availability in the near future, there are a few dispensaries now open, with on-site doctors to write that script. Among the maladies listed that qualify one for medical marijuana are anxiety, chronic pain, insomnia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. I get the feeling that not a lot of proof is needed, as one dispensary’s website advises that all you need is a valid passport and proof of age, and voila!—they can issue a medical prescription, which they are ‘delighted’ to offer, adding that the THC level of their products provides an experience ‘designed to elevate your journey.’
While marijuana remains illegal without a prescription, anyone who has been here for more than a day knows it is easy to obtain without a prescription. Reddit is full of online stories from vacationers to our country, and how they picked up enough to elevate their journeys through Costa Rica. +Simple possession—if one is careless and/or unlucky enough to get busted—will result only in confiscation by the authorities. Years ago, a friend of mine found what he thought was a safe spot to smoke one, partway down a rocky outcropping overlooking the ocean. Just as he was halfway through his spliff, he heard a commotion and looked up to see two bicycle cops scrambling down the path. They took away his half joint and admonished him to do it at home. Fair enough.
I am still debating as to whether I should go legal and get a prescription or continue to rely on one of the three different numbers I have in my phone of local black-market entrepreneurs who don’t need a prescription and will deliver. What I would like to do meanwhile is to offer my services, free of charge to the Costa Rican government, to act as a sort of guinea pig, and to rate the various strains available, in terms of taste, smell, and most important of all, potency. My own rating system would encompass the following six categories:
- Slight buzz – just enough to shift gears in your head for a few hours.
- Buzzed – pleasantly high, happy, and temporarily optimistic about your life plans.
- Stoned – high, with an increase in appetite and physical sensations, and with colors and outside sounds intensified.
- Stupidly stoned – way high, and happy to sit in front of the tube for hours, laughing hysterically at Mr. Ed reruns while eating pickles mixed with peanut butter.
- Dementia-like – wandering from room to room in your house, trying to remember what it is you got up from your spot in front of the flat screen to look for.
- Catatonic – you cannot move and will stare at your knees until you fall into a temporary coma.
If medical marijuana hopes to compete with the market we already know, some creative publicity will be needed. Because reality says that the vast majority of users will continue to get their product without the need for a medical script
